The employment numbers are out this morning and while the headline number is unsurprising — the unemployment rate in January edged up to 6.2% — economists are positively effusive about the details:
Here’s Dawn Desjardins, senior economist at RBC Economics:
Canada blows out the lights and creates 88,900 jobs in January
Canada’s job engine kept chugging in January generating 88,900 new jobs, continuing the string of very healthy gains started in September. January’s increase was twice the average monthly gain of 42,500 jobs in the fourth quarter. … The details showed strength across most industry groups with a small 3,600 rise in manufacturing employment, marking the third consecutive monthly gain. Along with gains in natural resources and construction, goods-producers added 21,200 to their payrolls. The services sector recorded another strong increase with employment surging 67,700. The gains were split between full-time employment which rose 45,900, and part-time employment which rose 42,900.
Despite the unemployment rate holding near the 30-year low (6.2%), there was limited evidence of wage pressures …
The Western provinces continued to be the driving force in Canada’s labour market with Alberta’s economy creating 24,000 new jobs and British Columbia’s employment rising by 31,700. Central Canada’s share of job gains was more muted than in December with Ontario posting a meager 7,600 increase although Quebec saw a 14,700 rise.
After another banner year for job creation in 2006, the economy was able to generate another astonishingly large gain in January…
Here’s Doug Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets raves:
…jobs are on fire while GDP growth is on ice. Canadian employment stunned the consensus yet again, with payrolls surging by a stunning 88,900 in January, following a revised 52,500 gain in the prior month, and follows a four-month string of robust readings. As much as one would like to point to a weather distortion in the latest data — due to the balmy weather in the first half of the month — it’s just not obvious in the figures. The gains were spread across most sectors, and a number of provinces.
And over at Scotia Capital, senior financial markets economist Carolyn Kwan sends out this dispatch:
The stunning display of resilience in the jobs market extended into 2007 with an additional 88.9k jobs created in January. One month does not make a trend, though five months of uninterrupted upside surprises in the jobs report nationally certainly has that feel. Over that period, the average monthly job gain has been a stellar 47.5k. Further strength in the labour markets was evident in the number of entrants to the jobs market this month. Given the perceived strength in the market, 110k more people entered the jobs market (the largest number of additions to the labour market since 1981), thus pushing up the unemployment rate one notch to 6.2%. The employment rate, in fact, hit a record high 63.4%